Derecho

Recently I learned a new word: derecho. Noun a line of intense, widespread, and fast-moving windstorms and sometimes thunderstorms that moves across a great distance and is characterized by damaging winds.

On a Monday, August 10, I was outside helping a young neighbor ride her bike. At one point we sat on the curb in the eerie stillness before a storm and looked up at the clouds. Something was coming. Later in my studio apartment I had to turn on the lights. Outside, late afternoon, the sky had turned the color of nightfall. I went to the other side of the building onto the fire escape on the west side. A slab of grey-green clouds were building up, streaked like marble. I expected staggers of lightning, the rumble of thunder, but they were mysteriously silent. It seemed to take a long time for something storm-like to happen.

Then. Came. The wind.

I rushed inside and watched as if a paper shredder had been turned on, churning up tree tops and roofing. As someone who has camped for many years and experienced the initial updraft that precedes a storm this doesn’t exactly describe a derecho. The wind blew, and blew, and blew. It was hard to imagine how anything could stay in one place. The Dumpster lids banged up and down like a steel drum symphony. Signs twisted and turned, ratcheting back and forth.

The whole time it looked like night outside. In Chicago we don’t often hear tornado sirens. A waterspout is more likely than a tornado—yet sirens were whirling along with the wind, adding to the cacophony.

 I was inside and watched from my window across an expanse of concrete. It wasn’t until the next day as I went for a run that I understood the full impact. I could hardly get down the sidewalk, then went to the street, and then had to stop and walk around trees on top of cars. The strip of parkland bordering the lakefront was riddle with down trees and tree limbs the size of telephone poles. I didn’t even make it to the water’s edge and stopped counting the number of trees I observed pulled up from the ground, the roots exposed or else cracked off at the base. These are old trees, big trees, ones I imagined had been planted by Daniel Burnham, the original city planner of the park.

All at once I felt the awesomeness of nature, that instinct to go whoa or wow and this cringey thing where you also want to go oww, that hurts.

Anyway, readers of this blog (both of you) will know I sometimes late at night watch YouTube clips of tsunamis. The Christmas Day one that destroyed Indonesia and South Asia comes to mind. But, also the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that swept over Japan makes an appearance. The reason behind this might mirror where I’m at psychologically at the time. The utter chaos, the sudden unexpected erasure of life how we know it. The loss of loved ones. A reckoning of mortality and the recognition that we are not in control. Never have been. That fate, destiny, some call it God, intervenes and redirects, sets a new course.

After completing my cross-country bike trip I came home full of confidence and hope for the future. I was sure that despite hardship and overwhelming odds I could do or attempt to do almost anything. Or at least figure out a Plan B. I also had had a lot of time to think—I mean 43 days in the saddle, 8 hours a day on a bike turning the pedals, evenings sitting in a tent by myself provided space and time—I’d decided I was ready for a new chapter in my life.  By that I mean I did the math. At 61, turning 62, healthy and active, I had a few more years left to contribute and use my skill set and gifts. Even under Covid and limited options, there were things I could do that would make a difference.

I might have been working off adrenaline and that hormone that gets released when one is in the zone. I had dreams of harnessing my passions and interests and being able to step into a role.

Instead, like a derecho, I’ve seen my leaves stripped off, limbs flung to the ground. The wind pushes and pushes until the tree topples. Something one never thought would happen. In the video of the Iowa derecho, the backyard suddenly opens up to the sky where before there had been a shaded shelter for the family. (Long gone is the trampoline, kiddie pool, and lawn chair cushions.)

The Wizard of Oz is an analogy of how one follows another path, pivots to discover she is more than the person she thought she was, new worlds before her. Adversely, the derecho just laid waste to the landscape without transporting me elsewhere. 

I’m still trying to figure out who the new me will be—as I continue to walk past downed trees and boughs with dead, dry leaves rattling in the breeze.

Minute 14:13 the money shot